CONSTRUCTING AND DECONSTRUCTING THE BODY

IN THE CULT OF ASKLEPIOS

Nicholas Rynearson

DO NOT CITE IN ANY CONTEXT WITHOUT PERMISSION OF THE AUTHOR

Nicholas Rynearson, Department of Classics, 58 Prospect Ave., Princeton University,

Princeton, NJ 08544
 ABSTRACT

Contemporary with the development of the revolutionary theories of the body by the

Hippocratic doctors in the late fifth century B.C.E., another medical movement was

enjoying both increasing popularity and widening geographical distribution throughout

the Greek world. This ancient alternative to Hippocratic medicine was the cult of the

healing god Asklepios. Suppliants slept in the temples at his sanctuaries, where the god

visited them in their dreams and cured their illnesses.

Hundreds of representations of body parts discovered at many of these sanctuaries

bear witness to the miraculous cures the godÕs suppliants experienced. These anatomical

votives represent nearly every part of the body and provide a glimpse into the

construction of the body, sickness and healing in the context of the cult. A further record

of divine healing is preserved in a series of narrative inscriptions at Epidauros, an

important early sanctuary.

Considering these two forms of evidence to be complementary parts of the cultÕs

rhetoric of self-representation, I examine the interplay of fragmentation and integration in

divine healing and the relationship between representing and healing the body. The cultÕs

objectification and localization of disease and the conception of the body as parts in these

two forms of self-representation mark a fascinating and influential moment in the history

of the body in the west.

 CONSTRUCTING AND DECONSTRUCTING THE BODY
IN THE CULT OF ASKLEPIOS

Over the course of the second half of the fifth century, a revolution in the art of

healing took shape. The healers known to us as the Hippocratics developed a medical

epistemology based on the natural causation of disease, the investigation of those causes

through rational means and a therapeutic practice based on regimen as opposed to surgery

and drugs (pharmaka).

Comparing the writings of the Hippocratic Corpus with other late fifth century

discourses, especially ThucydidesÕ History, Jacques Jouanna has quite rightly

emphasized the significant place occupied by the Hippocratics in the intellectual milieu

of that period, characterized by a what we tend to call a ÔrationalizingÕ or ÔscientificÕ

world view (Jouanna 1999). Others, especially G.E.R. Lloyd, have focused on the place

of the Hippocratics in a narrative of the history of science, a story of steady progress

away from myth and superstition towards rationality and enlightenment. Both this

diachronic approach and the synchronic view of the Hippocratics in the context of the

fifth century ÔenlightenmentÕ, while making good sense of the Hippocratic Corpus on its

own, present a one-sided picture of ancient medicine as a whole because their focus

excludes the cotemporary and extremely popular cults of various healing gods. Although

the kind of medicine represented by these cults does not fit in with a simple narrative of

scientific progress and is not easily reconciled with an understanding of the fifth century

as a period of enlightenment, these cults comprised a culturally significant alternative

understanding of disease, health and the body.

 By far the most significant and broadly popular of these cults is that of Asklepios.

Like the more rational Hippocratic medicine, this healing cult enjoyed an increasing

importance as well as a widening geographical diffusion during the latter half of the fifth

century. Epidauros, the most important early center of the cult, was already an

international destination for those seeking a divine cure by the middle of the fifth century

and a number of other city-states, including Athens, imported the god from its elaborate

sanctuary over the course of the second half of the century. Our own rationalist

tendencies and our conception of Ôscientific progressÕ should not obscure the fact that the

cult was not replaced or overshadowed by Hippocratic medicine but in fact thrived and

expanded in precisely the same period and continued to be an extremely popular and

important cult into late antiquity.

Although I will focus on the differences between Hippocratic and divine healing,

it should be stressed at the outset that even the most virulent of the rhetorical attacks

made by the Hippocratics on other theories of medicine and irrational superstitions never

criticize the cult of the god to whom they credited the invention of their art. In fact, the

invocation of Asklepios in the Hippocratic Oath, an early document from the Corpus, and

the many dedications of medical instruments made by practitioners of rational medicine

at the godÕs sanctuaries provide eloquent testimony to the coexistence of these two

different systems.

In order to highlight the characteristics of the cult, a brief sketch of the conception

of the body presented by the Hippocratic Corpus will first be necessary. Part of the

Hippocratic revolution in healing is the specific conception of the body that informs their

theories of health and disease. This body is, roughly speaking, a container filled with
various liquids or humors. We cannot speak of a single Hippocratic theory of the

humors, since different treatises in the Corpus differ with respect to their qualities,

functions and even number but in general, the Hippocratics believed that there is a proper

proportion, movement and interaction of these humors that constitute health, while

corresponding disturbances produce disease. The author of On the Nature of Humans

offers the following description of the body and definition of health:

The body of man has in itself blood, phlegm, yellow bile and black bile;

these make up the nature of his body, and through these he feels pain or

enjoys health. He enjoys the most perfect health when these elements are

duly proportioned [metri™s] to one another in respect of compounding

[kr•sios], quality [dunamios] and quantity [pl•theos], and when they are

perfectly mixed [malista memigmena]. Pain is felt when one of these

constituents is in defect or excess, or is isolated in the body without being

compounded with all the others [Nat. Hom. 4, translated by Jones

(1953:11-13) with modifications].

The author posits the necessity of understanding the nature of the human body as a whole

and as an integrated system as necessarily prior to any science of healing, which is, in

turn, based upon this understanding (see Jouanna [1999:325-327]). The work of the

healer is to restore the proper proportion, mixture or movement of the bodyÕs humors.

This is the reason for the HippocraticsÕ primary concern with regimen Ð diet, exercise,

and baths Ð as a means for regulating health.

 Furthermore, the highly rhetorical nature of this and other treatises, for example

On Ancient Medicine and On the Sacred Disease, show that the Hippocratics did not

concern themselves with theorizing the body for scientific and therapeutic purposes

alone, but rather that the specific representation of the body was mobilized as part of a

crucial strategy of agonistic, rhetorical self-definition and promotion (see Jouanna

[1999]).

It is against this model of the Hippocratic body that I would like to set the

discussion of the very different version of the body constructed in the cult of Asklepios.

Unlike the Hippocratics, the cult left no treatises or rhetorical pieces as such that outline

the principles of divine healing. A consideration of two kinds of evidence does, however,

provide insight into the logic of divine healing and the conception of the body upon

which it is based. The first type of evidence I wish to consider is the anatomical votives

that characterize the cult. The second is the remarkable set of healing narratives or

iamata from Epidauros. Reading these two types of evidence together I argue both (1)

that the underlying conceptions of disease, health and the body that characterize the cult

are very different from the systemic model of the Hippocratics and (2) that the cultÕs

specific model of the body as represented in the votives and the inscriptions is mobilized

as part of a program of self-definition and promotion that is no less strategic and

rhetorical than that found in the Hippocratic Corpus.

I begin with the anatomical votives, which have been found in many different

sanctuaries all over the Greek world. They are dedicated as thank-offerings to a variety

of helper divinities, but especially to those with healing functions. A number of the

divine healers who receive such votives remain significant, especially local hero-healers
like the Heros Iatros and Amynos at Athens, and these healers share many features with

Asklepios. However, as Asklepios became the most important healing divinity in the

Greek world, a great majority of the anatomical votives that have survived or are known

from inscribed inventories come from his sanctuaries, known as Asklepieia.

The form and materials vary, but the most common are stone relief tablets,

engraved metal plaques, and fully three-dimensional representations in stone or

terracotta.1 There is a particularly rich collection of terra cotta examples from the

Asklepieion at Corinth, ranging in date from the last quarter of the fifth to the last quarter

of the fourth century B.C.E. (see Figures 1 and 2).2

These votives, whatever their form and material, are designed to be displayed.

Many of the terracottas from Corinth preserve holes for hanging either in the temple

itself, in other structures, such as stoas, or even from the branches of trees growing in the

sanctuary (van Straten [1990]; see Figures 3, 4 and 5). Reliefs of various sizes would

have also been hung from sanctuary structures or supported on small columns designed

for the purpose and set up throughout the sanctuary (van Straten [1990]; see Figure 6).3

The combined effect of hundreds of these votives would have presented a striking

sense of bodily fragmentation to the worshipper upon entering the sanctuary. There is

more here than a powerful aesthetic effect, however: this sense of fragmentation created

by the accumulation of votive body parts provides an important insight into cult medicine

and its self-representation.

First, the representation of the affected part of the body as a fragment suggests

that worshippers conceived of their experience of both disease and cure as distinctly

localized phenomena. A specific part of the body suffers from disease and is healed by
the god in order to restore the suppliant to health and the specificity of the representation

reflects this localization. The prominent display of these votives shows that the cult

endorsed this understanding of divine healing. This stands in contrast to the Hippocratic

representation of the body as a system and corresponding treatment through regimen of

the whole body in order to alleviate symptoms that may manifest themselves in specific

parts of the body but are the result of disturbances in the balance of the bodyÕs system of

humors.

Furthermore, each anatomical votive proclaims the power of the god by

representing a successful narrative of healing, just as any object dedicated in a sanctuary

has a relationship to narrative, whether it is simply a tablet commemorating the sacrifice

it depicts or a famous object that prompts the (re)telling of the story that led to its

dedication. HerodotosÕ history provides many examples of narratives linked to objects in

this way, preserving the kleos, or fame, both of the god to whom they are dedicated and,

in some cases, of the dedicant as well.4

As a trace of divine healing activity and the result of a narrative of suffering and

salvation through contact with the divine, each votive is both a fragment of biography, as

the record of the momentous occasion of that divine contact in the life of a mortal, and a

tekm•rion, a direct proof of the power of the god himself. The autobiographical

component of the representational work of the votive is subordinated, especially as most

anatomical votives do not carry inscriptions. Even so much as the name of the dedicant

is usually irrecoverable, especially for the modern scholar, as the autobiographical

narrative of suffering and cure is subsumed by the rhetoric of the cult. It is only through

this rhetorical framework, the grammar of the cultÕs language of self-representation, that
we have access to these narratives and thus the field of fragmented body parts becomes a

manifest record of AsklepiosÕ healing power and the efficacy of the cult.

The votive, moreover, occupies a very specific place in the narrative of cure it

represents. Because the suppliant dedicates the votive after he or she has been healed at

the end of his or her experience in the sanctuary, it marks the departure from the

sanctuary and the return to the everyday world. The dedication of Lysimachos (Figure 7)

dramatizes this moment: the scene depicts Lysimachos, now restored to health,

dedicating a large votive leg, his final act in the sanctuary. The narrative of cure thus

culminates in the dedication of the votive that simultaneously commemorates the act of

healing and marks the departure from the sanctuary that healing makes possible. In this

way, each votive encodes a play of absence and presence: as a trace Ð in the fully

Derridean sense Ð the presence of the votive marks the absence of the healed suppliant.

The consequence of calling to mind this absent healed body leads to a

consideration of the final rhetorical effect of the votive specifically as a fragment. Its

correspondence with a healed body somewhere in the world outside the sanctuary means

that it instantiates a species of synecdoche, in which the healthy whole is emphasized by

contrast with the fragmentary trace that represents it. This specific kind of part for whole

makes the fragmentary status of the votive a crucial element in the representation of

divine healing as an example from a much later source makes dramatically clear.

Aelius Aristides, the cultÕs most famous spokesman, records many of his dream

encounters with Asklepios in his Hieroi Logoi, written in the second century C.E.

Among them he recounts the following:

 The god said that it was necessary to cut off part of the body itself in

behalf of the safety of the whole. This however, would be too great a

demand and from it he would exempt me. Instead, I should take off the

ring which I was wearing and offer it to Telesphoros. For this would do

the same as if I offered the finger itself. Furthermore, I should inscribe on

the band of the ring ÔSon of CronosÕ. After this there would be salvation

[48.27 translation Edelstein and Edelstein (1998:287) with modification].

Here the logic of substitution of the votive for a part of the living body is explicit. The

possibility of the literal fragmentation of the body is raised in order to be displaced onto

the votive and thereby negated. AristidesÕ ring thus conflates the salvation of the whole

body with the sparing of the individual part from amputation; his body remains whole

because the part is spared through substitution.

Despite the lateness of AristidesÕ account, the strong continuity in both the

practice of healing and the representation of the body to which the Hieroi Logoi attest in

what is an essentially conservative religious context makes it a valuable resource for

understanding the way divine cures were experienced and understood. I would in fact

argue that AristidesÕ testimony simply provides an explicit account of the logic that the

anatomical votive exploits even more suggestively, if silently, since the votive represents

the affected part directly rather than symbolically. The fragmentation in which the votive

participates is crucial to the representation of the salvation of the whole, which exists as a

healthy whole precisely because of the activity that is concretized in the trace of the

votive. In other words, every anatomical votive represents, as it were, a kind of Ônon-

amputationÕ underscoring the integrity of the absent, cured dedicant.

 In order to develop the themes of localization and fragmentation and their

rhetorical significance that I have tried to tease out of the silent tekm•ria of the

anatomical votives in more explicit terms, I turn now to the inscriptions from Epidauros,

a body of written evidence contemporary with the classical and late classical votives that

are the main focus above. Preserved on four stelai dating to the second half of the fourth

century B.C.E., these inscriptions record the experiences of those who came to sleep in

the sanctuary in hopes of a cure. 5 As written testimonia, they may be thought of as

representing in a direct way the narrative that the votives suggest in their own dramatic,

visual way and as such provide a wealth of information about the cult.

First, the iamata make explicit the cultÕs emphasis on the role of the displayed

dedications, including the iamata themselves, as rhetorical elements in the construction

of belief as tekm•ria of divine power.6 One instance explicitly takes on a direct

relationship to a specific object found in the sanctuary, a stone placed outside the area for

incubation, providing the repetition of the narrative that led to its dedication.

ÒHermodicus of Lampsacus was paralyzed in body. This man, when he slept in the

temple, the god healed and he ordered him upon coming out to bring to the temple as

large a stone as he could. He brought the stone which now lies before the abatonÓ (A.15

translation Edelstein and Edelstein [1998:232-233] with modifications).

Several warning tales of doubting individuals further confirm the rhetorical

intention of displaying the dedications. In each one the suppliant tours the sanctuary and

examines the dedications and inscriptions and laughs in disbelief at the cures they

represent. The skeptical are chastised by the god and healed despite their disbelief,
having learned through experience the proper way to read the dedications. A woman

from Athens provides an example:

Ambrosia of Athens, blind in one eye. She came as a suppliant to the god.

As she walked around the sanctuary, she laughed at some of the cures as

unbelievable and impossible, that the lame and the blind should become

well through merely seeing a dream. In her sleep she saw a vision. It

seemed to her that the god stood by her and said he would cure her, but

that he would ask her in exchange to dedicate to the sanctuary a silver pig

as a memorial of her ignorance. After saying this, he cut her diseased

eyeball and poured in some pharmakon. When day came she walked out

healthy [A.4 translation Edelstein and Edelstein (1998:230) with

modifications].

The iamata also provide us with many practical details about the cult, such as an

indication of the range of ailments for which suppliants turned to Asklepios for help as

well as the kind of divine treatments the worshipper could expect for such ailments.

Again, as we shall see, though we may obtain relatively more insight into the individual

experience through these narratives, what comes to the fore is an articulation of the cultÕs

self-representation through the selective representation of narratives in stylized and

standardized form.

In general, Asklepios appears as a miraculous surgeon and chemist, specializing

in the two branches of medicine considered by the Hippocratics to be secondary to the

new therapeutics of regimen. In this respect, Asklepios shows the characteristics of the

archaic healer as presented in the Iliad, whose function is Òto cut out arrows and to
sprinkle soothing drugsÓ (11.515, translated by the author). Asklepios cuts open the body

to remove a number of specific disease-causing agents, including arrows and spearheads

but also various parasites. Other kinds of ailments are treated with pharmaka, one of the

most common being blindness, which is cured with ointments applied to the eyes.

Both of these broadly defined categories of healing activity reinforce the sense of

localization suggested by the votives since they are performed directly on the affected

part. The language of the iamata further emphasizes this through repeatedly referring to

the part in question in the description of the ailment and the narrative of the cure. Note,

for example, the emphasis on localization in the case of Ambrosia above, where the god

specifically Òcut her diseased eyeballÓ.7

A consideration of a noteworthy use of formulaic language in the inscriptions

returns us to my earlier emphasis on the end of the healing narrative and the departure of

the healed suppliant. Many of the narratives end with the phrase Òwhen day came he/she

left the sanctuary healthyÓ or a variation on it.8 This formula makes healing and

departure virtually simultaneous in a manner parallel to the emphasis on the end of the

healing narrative encoded in the votive. Relating the narrative to the priests Ð if this is

how these texts were in fact produced Ð in order that they be inscribed in stone to glorify

the god in much the same way as any other dedication is perhaps an alternative final step

in oneÕs experience at the sanctuary.

Finally, several extreme examples of divine surgery in the iamata also suggest a

central role for the dynamic of fragmentation and reintegration at play in the example

from Aristides adduced above. There are two cases where decapitation leads to the

removal of a disease-causing agent and dramatizes the power of the god to restore the
body to wholeness. The case of Aristagora of Troezen repays closer examination.

Suffering from a tapeworm, Aristagora slept in her local temple of Asklepios and had a

dream that:

the sons of the god, while he [Asklepios] was not present but away in

Epidauros, cut off her head, but, being unable to put it back on again, they

sent a messenger to Asklepios asking him to come. Meanwhile day breaks

and the priest clearly sees her head cut off from the body. When night

approached, Aristagora saw a vision. It seemed to her that the god had

come from Epidauros and fastened her head onto her neck. Then he cut

open her belly, took the tapeworm out, and stitched her up again. And

after that she became well [B.23, translation Edelstein and Edelstein

(1998:234) with modification].9

In addition to asserting two hierarchies Ð the superiority of the god to his mortal

counterparts and the primacy of the Epidaurian sanctuary over its counterpart at Troezen

Ð this account revolves around the ability of Asklepios to make the body whole again

after it has been subject to the dramatic violence of decapitation. The fragmented state of

the body at dawn, when we would expect the healed body to appear, underscores the

miraculous power of the god to heal and make whole in much the same way as the

threatened but avoided amputation in AristidesÕ dream.

This cure also returns us to the importance of localization in the Asklepian

representation of disease and cure, since the initial mistake consists not only in the

clumsy inability to reverse the effects of a drastic surgical procedure, but also in

performing the surgery on the wrong part of the body in the first place. This amounts to a
kind of misdiagnosis, a failure to find the seat of the disease, which the god corrects by

first undoing the damage and then performing a procedure on the correct part of the body.

This dramatic narrative, then, brings to an extreme the two central issues of

fragmentation and localization suggested by the field of body parts created by the

accumulated votives with which we began.

In conclusion, I would emphasize the significance of this version of the body and

the cultural currency of its mobilization as part of the rhetorical project of this extremely

popular cult. The Asklepian body, a body susceptible to both physical and symbolic

fragmentation and a locus for staging a particular narrative of part to whole, was

available as an alternative model that the Greeks found equally good to think with from

the fifth century down to late antiquity. The presence of this alternative should caution us

against allowing our modern scientific prejudice and our investment in a narrative of

progress to posit a singular conception of the ancient body understood exclusively

through the Hippocratic Corpus.

Acknowledgements.

I would like to thank the organizers of the Archaeology of the Body conference at
Stanford for inviting me to present my work and the editors of the Stanford Journal of
Archaeology, Ashish Chadha and Ana Spasojevic. I would also like to thank Fritz Graf
for reading and commenting on an early version of this paper and Heinrich von Staden,
whose graduate seminar at Princeton introduced me to the study of ancient medicine.
Finally, thanks to the anonymous reviewers of the SJA for their extremely helpful
criticism and suggestions.

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Aleshire, S.
1989 The Athenian Asklepieion: the People, Their Dedications, and the
Inventories. J.C. Gieben, Amsterdam.

1991 Asklepios at Athens: Epigraphic and Prosographic Essays on the Athenian

Healing Cults. J.C. Gieben, Amsterdam.

Dillon, M.
1994 The Didactic Nature of the Epidaurian Iamata. Zeitschrift fŸr Papyrologie
und Epigraphik 101: 239-260.

Edelstein, E. and L. Edelstein.

1998 Asclepius. 2nd ed. Johns Hopkins, Baltimore.

Bresc-Bautier, G.
1990 Ex-voto. In Le corps en morceaux. Minist•re de la Culture, de la
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des musŽes nationaux, Paris.

ForsŽn, B.
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Jouanna, J.
1999 Hippocrates. Translated by M. DeBevoise. Johns Hopkins, Baltimore.

Lang, M.
1977 Cure and Cult in Ancient Corinth: A Guide to the Asklepieion. Meriden
Gravure, Meriden, Conn.

LiDonnici, L.
1995 The Epidaurian Miracle Inscriptions: Text, Translation and Commentary.
ScholarÕs Press, Atlanta.
Roebuck, C.
1951 Corinth XIV, The Asklepieion and Lerna. The American
School of Classical Studies at Athens.

van Straten, F.
1981 Gifts for the Gods. In Faith, Hope and Worship: Aspects of
Religious Mentality in the Ancient World, edited by H. Versnel, pp. 65-151. Brill,
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 NOTES
1
Plates in ForsŽn (1996), van Straten (1981) and Lang (1977) present a wide range of
examples; see also Aleshire (1989). The practice of dedicating anatomical votives to
commemorate divine cures is a point of continuity with modern Christianity, particularly
Catholicism and Greek Orthodoxy. In Greece, one still sees many such votives in
churches connected with the healing powers of saints, especially the Virgin Mary.
Christian anatomical votives can be made of a wide range of materials, including wax,
wood and other perishable materials; it is possible that ancient practice also embraced
other materials that are invisible in the archaeological record. See Bresc-Bautier (1990).
2
See Roebuck (1951) for the details of the excavation of the Asklepieion at Corinth; see
also Lang (1977).
3
See van Straten (1990) for examples and on the placement of votives in sanctuaries in
general.
4
E.g., the dedications of Croesus at Delphi described at 1.51 or the bronze statuette of
Arion at Taenarum commemorating his landing there on the back of a Dolphin (1.24).
5
The four stelai are referred to as A, B, C and D. A and B have large sections of well-
preserved text and C and D are more fragmentary. Individual cures are referred to by the
letter of the stele and numbered consecutively on all four. Details about the texts and
their preservation can be found in LiDonnici (1995).
6
On the iamata as didactic texts, see Dillon (1994).
7
Compare, e.g. A.4, 13; B.23, 30.
8
E.g., A.3,4,8,9,12,13,19,20.
9
Aelianus provides a similar account with significant differences in his De Natura
Animalium IX.33.